The Birth of Jazz

1. The Birth of Jazz

2. The Origins…? • Jazz was surely developed in New Orleans • Not necessarily in the Red-Light District of Storyville • Based on the music of brass bands, the blues, and ragtime

3. The Word • Not only are the origins of music nebulous, so are the origins of the word jazz. • (read article from Porter)

4. African Retentions • Music served a function • Group participation • A connection to dancing • Emphasis on rhythm • Call and response • The use of improvisation • Use of the bent note • Aural tradition

5. Ashanti Yam Celebration

6. Syncretism • The story of jazz begins with two of the most important population shifts in modern history: European emigrants seeking a better life in the New World and Africans being brutally uprooted and transported to the Americas and sold into slavery. • These cultures intermingled for centuries, thus creating a new culture. • This evolution is called a syncretism.

7. European Influences • Harmony • Written tradition • Instrumentation • Compositional forms like 32-bar popular song form and multi-strain form of rags and marches.

8. New Orleans • Established in 1718 outpost in the French colony of Louisiana • Culturally French and Spanish • Often called “the Paris of America” prior to the Civil War. • 1803 Louisiana Purchase • New Orleans became an ethnic composite that included Irish, Germans, Italians and people of Caribbean descent.

9. Habanera • Jelly Roll Morton called it the Spanish Tinge • Rhythm of Caribbean and Cuban cultures. • (example: Bizet’s Carmen, 1875) • Led to sense of loosening of rhythm called swing.

10. Precursors to Jazz • The slave songs. • Field holler / Work Song • My Little Annie • Berta, Berta